Krozik

Krozik does not remember a life before the Murosburg Academy because he was raised there. All he knows is that, as a baby, he was found by an Academy Researcher alone on a sea shore, separated from his Tortle kin. He knows not if he was separated because he got himself lost, or if he was abandoned, or if his parents and siblings had met a terrible fate, but he was taken to a world where there were no other Tortles, so he grew to become a person like no other of his kind.

Krozik was never treated poorly at the Academy, but he was treated differently. As he grew, Krozik learned to read and write quickly and he studied magic like any other student, but being the only Tortle for many miles, he was often the subject of research by curious members of senior students and faculty. He was never treated inhumanely by his researchers, never physically harmed in their experiments, rarely was he ever even forced to do these things, but his repeated excursions as a lab rat somewhat garbled his sense of self-identity and affected how his fellow students viewed him. He made few lasting friends, and though he discovered an early penchant for Alchemy specializing in fungi and decaying plant matter, his treatment by the school affected his studies.

Alienated, quiet, or reclusive students were not an oddity at the Academy by any means. In fact, every class usually had a handful of distant characters. However, time and time again, with those qualities in an individual there was always the danger of the pursuit of… less savory knowledge. Indeed, many isolated students over the years went wayward and delved into necromantic and demonic magics, became warlocks and dark wizards, and caused havoc. Krozik, however, was a little different.

One day, he was scouring the Alchemy books in the library looking for anything new that he hadn’t touched upon in his recent studies, and he found a dusty old book in a dark corner that looked untouched for years. It was bound by what looked like weaved bark and vines. Inside was a strange runic language that he could not understand, but he vaguely remembered seeing out in the neighboring swamps carved on trees and rocks while out doing field research. He soon became aware that it was the enigmatic runic language of the druids, and it fascinated him deeply. He started going out of the Academy and city more often, looking for more druidic text out in the wilds on the outskirts of Murosburg that he could cross-reference with his book. In doing so, he managed to get a basic understanding of the language, and with it the theme of the book of which he deciphered: “The Great Cycle”. It only made him even hungrier to understand it and Druidism more fully. Krozik finally found his life’s work.

Then, one day, he lost the book during a research assignment at a corrupted waystone: A research assignment that cost the lives of his fellow students, and almost his own.

Death
Krozik was tragically killed by Lord Soth in the Domain of Dread.